Making Strides
by Lady-of-the-Refrigerator
Summary: "Tell me you're my father. I need to hear you say the words. You always either just let me talk or you equivocate or you… climb into my head and repeat things from my perspective, but you've never just come out and said it." [Post-5x08, Lizzington]


The first time Liz was able to walk across a room unassisted after the ten months she spent in a coma, Red was with her. After all the time he spent looking after her while she was incapacitated, she couldn't think of anything more fitting than for him to be there to see her literally get back on her feet again.

It was just the two of them awake in Red's home—Agnes had gone to bed hours before and Dembe not long after her. Even though Liz was exhausted from her physical therapy session in the afternoon, she figured it would be worth one last attempt for the night because she could sleep off the extra exertion.

Sure, she risked pushing herself too far for one day, but she'd made so much progress, it seemed a shame not to try for just a little more. After all, she'd never been a particularly patient person and she was getting stir-crazy having to rely on Red and Dembe for everything. She wanted freedom much too desperately to worry about the possibility of set backs.

Each and every slow, cautious step down the hallway felt like an accomplishment. The adrenaline rush from it alone was enough to propel her along her path. A month ago, she wouldn't have made it even a fraction of the distance she'd made today. Hell, a _week_ ago, she wouldn't have made it. A week ago, she could barely manage baby steps like the ones Agnes had taken while she was unconscious, which Red had dutifully documented and recorded along with all the other milestones to show Liz once she woke up.

Soon enough, Liz rounded the corner into the library where Red had retired to read for the night and came to a stop only a few short steps away from him. When he looked up from his book and registered what he was seeing, he sprang to his feet. On impulse, he swept her up in his arms and spun her around in celebration.

Butterflies fluttered in Liz's stomach as Red held her, the sound of his laughter combined with the spinning to make her feel buoyant and airy and maybe even a little lightheaded.

He set her gently back on her feet, steadying her while she worked to convince her still-weakened limbs to support her weight again. A gamut of emotions played out across his face—he seemed thrilled nearly to the brink of tears.

Red's breath tickled the fine, downy hairs on Liz's face. They were standing so close. So incredibly close. They stood there frozen in each other's space, still touching, while seconds ticked by, bathed in awkwardness and intimacy and the magnetic pull of temptation.

 _Temptation_.

The last thing there should be between her and Red was temptation, yet there always had been, right from the beginning, and—more horrifically—there still was. Liz couldn't shake it, no matter how hard she tried, how much she tried to convince herself that the things she felt towards him were appropriate and innocent—something, _anything_ , other than what they really were.

Because that pull Liz felt? It was anything but familial affection. To her dismay, it wasn't even platonic affection. And she couldn't help but sense that whatever it was she felt might be mutual. How else could she explain all the lingering looks and the touches and the _declarations?_

Even now, as she leaned subtly closer to his utterly distracting lips, Red wasn't running away in disgust. Why oh why wouldn't he run away in disgust? Why not move back to a more respectable distance? Why lean _closer?_ Why… why part his lips, and bend as if to meet her halfw—

Liz shook herself, coming to her senses just before she allowed herself to cross an uncrossable line, one she surely couldn't return from unchanged.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I don't know what's wrong with me."

"Elizabeth—"

"I think… I really need to talk to someone. _Shit_. I mean… You didn't raise me. I never… You—I—"

"Lizzy—"

"Leave it to me to finally have a reason for why I always… and I _still_ have to go and fuck it up."

When Liz stepped back unsteadily from Red's embrace, she was close to hyperventilating.

"Sweetheart." He reached out for her but she flinched away, rushing to the couch as fast as her tired, feeble limbs would carry her. She threw her hands over her face, unable to deal with the shame of what she'd almost done.

That damn shirt ruined everything.

Before the shirt, she could tuck away her feelings for Red in a worn old box and hide them under the metaphorical floorboards of her mind. Ever since then, they'd been knocking and knocking, trying to escape, and it was all she could do to keep them locked tightly away. Better that she redirect them towards Tom… but Tom was gone now.

Liz could feel Red coming closer, and when she peeked out from behind her hands, she noticed that he had knelt down in front of her on the floor. She couldn't help but think about the time he surrendered to her in the park, speaking of sunlight and salvation. Kneeling in supplication like a knight to his lady fair.

She lowered her hands and studied him, searching his face for any indication of what was going on behind his eyes. Eyes that even now were looking at her like she was some kind of royalty and he was but her most loyal servant.

It was all wrong.

Fathers weren't supposed to worship their daughters. Not like this. It didn't feel… proper. The desperate reverence in his eyes crossed all sorts of lines. Like it always did. If he was really her father, she should be repulsed. _He_ should be. But she wasn't. He wasn't.

When he reached for her again, Liz didn't pull her hand away. He drew his thumb across her skin and she shivered.

"Tell me you're my father. I need to hear you say the words," she begged, distraught. "You always either just let me talk or you equivocate or you… climb into my head and repeat things from my perspective, but you've never just come out and said it."

"Lizzy, I…" He trailed off, working his jaw like he wanted to keep speaking but couldn't force the words out of his mouth.

"Why can't you say it? Why is it so hard?"

He closed his eyes and shook his head, his lips pressed together.

Doubt slithered its way into Liz's mind and pooled in her stomach whenever she confronted Red and he gave her such evasive responses. Doubt led her down a path towards something that was even more dangerous— _hope_.

She raised her chin in a challenge. "Tell me you're not my father, then."

Red's eyes snapped open again and he stared at her, frantically searching her face for her motivation, and his grip tightened reflexively on her hand.

"I'm not your father," he said, flat out—no stumbling over his words, no avoidance… It didn't feel at all like dragging the words from his throat, the way it did when she demanded he say the reverse. "I'm not your father. Your father is dead."

"I shot him. You didn't lie about that."

He shifted on the floor, maybe restless, maybe exhilarated, maybe both. "No, I didn't. You shot him. The night of the fire. You protected your mother."

"And you're not being symbolic or figurative or—"

"No. I am not your father, Lizzy. I've never been your father." He swallowed visibly, his Adam's apple moving in his throat. "I don't want to be your father," he added, more quietly than the rest.

Those words coming from his mouth—it should feel like rejection, but Liz knew that wasn't what it was. The way he said it didn't sound like rejection. If anything, it was a different kind of acceptance.

"I don't want you to be my father."

"Why?" he asked, strangely insistent, almost pleading.

"I don't want to be that fucked up."

Just as Red's face started to fall, Liz grabbed him by the sides of his head and covered his lips with hers. He whimpered in surprise, in sudden understanding, and even as her entire body flooded with relief, she had to force herself to pull back again lest she be tempted to take whatever this was too far too fast. They still had too much unfinished business between them, too many unanswered questions to risk getting ahead of themselves here. This was _delicate_. They had to be circumspect, which didn't come easy with regards to each other.

"Oh," he uttered, slightly dazed, slightly breathless. "You meant because…"

"Yeah," she chuckled. " _Because_."

Red let out a gust of a laugh, his face breaking out in an infectious grin under her hands. He reached up to close his hand around one of hers and turned his head so he could press a lingering kiss into her palm.

"Thank god," he said, gazing up at Liz from where he still knelt on the floor, starry-eyed and obviously relieved to be freed from constraints of fallacious fatherhood. She'd been miserable, lying to herself about how she felt about him all these months. If he'd suffered even half the conflicted feelings she'd had since she confronted him that night, he must have been miserable, too.

"There's one thing I don't understand. _How_ are you not my father? The shirt…"

Red shook his head and turned her hand over in his to kiss her knuckles. "I don't know why Harold would pick that shirt of all things to test for DNA…"

"What's wrong with testing it?"

"It wasn't my shirt. I've never worn it."

"Did… Cooper didn't know that, did he?"

"I don't know," he said. "I hope he didn't. I can't imagine why he would point you in that direction if he did."

"Why didn't you tell me it wasn't yours when I brought you those results? Why on earth would you let me believe you're my father if you're not?"

"I was afraid if I tried to explain myself, you would ask me to leave."

"But you offered to go. You always offer to go."

"And I'm always afraid you'll make me. Because I'll have to do it. I'll have to leave. And I don't want to leave. It's selfish of me, I realize that, but I—"

"I didn't want you to go," she said in a rush; the mere thought of it made her throat start to close up.

"You didn't? Not at all?"

"No."

"But I let you believe that I _lied_ to you. I let you believe I was the type of person who would allow his own daughter to believe she killed her father as a four year old child, rather than admit he was alive and well. Why on earth did you let me stay after that?"

"Because I tried to see what life would be like without you once and it was the biggest mistake I've ever made," she blurted out. Red seemed just as taken aback by what Liz said and how vehemently she said it as she was by the fact that she was able to say it at all. It was easier to pretend what she'd done never happened and try to ignore the ever-present shadow her decision cast over them.

"I wasn't going to make that mistake again no matter what," she continued, haltingly, "I was scared then, and alone and everything in my life fell apart after you came into it and I thought if I just got away from you, it could all go back to normal, but I was wrong. I was dead wrong. My life didn't get any better or easier or happier without you. If anything, it…" Liz closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. "You never held any of that against me."

Red cleared his throat, but when he spoke, his voice was still thick with emotion. "How could I? When I lost you that day, it felt like my life had ended, too. The fact that I got to have another chance made everything— _everything_ —worth it.

"I've always been willing to be whatever you needed me to be for you to allow me to stay in your life. If that meant you needed me to keep my distance, to set new boundaries for me, I could accept that. If you needed me to be a father to you, I could accept that, too. Whatever you need me to be, I'll be."

"Even if it's not what you want to be. Even if… even if what I want you to be makes what you would want to be impossible."

"Yes."

Liz bit her lip, taking in his earnest face, his bright, hopeful eyes. She knew why _she_ didn't want him out of her life anymore, why she jumped at the excuse that he was family to justify keeping him close, even though family was by definition incompatible with her reason. Could it be that they were both choosing to overlook pain they'd caused each other because they were trying to avoid admitting the same thing?

"Are you in love with me?" she asked at last.

He was silent for a long moment. "If you need me to be."

"Red," she breathed. "I don't need you to be anything that you aren't already."

"Oh, Lizzy…" He trailed off with a sigh that hitched in his throat. "Truth be told, if you need me to be in love with you, it would only be giving me permission to feel exactly how I've actually felt for years now but have never allowed myself to name."

"I do, then. I think I do need that from you." She took a breath and held it, letting it out bit by grounding bit through her nose. "Do you need it from me?"

Red's eyebrows rose and his eyes widened in surprise and the slightest tinge of wonder. "I'm not sure 'need' is the word I'd chose—"

"How about want? Would you want that from me?" He opened his mouth and she could tell he was about to protest, so she cut him off. "Forget about what you think you deserve. Would you want me to be in love with you?"

"If…"

"If I wanted to be?"

He nodded.

"I _do_ want to be. It's… I already am."


End file.
